78 research outputs found
Gestures Enhance Foreign Language Learning
Language and gesture are highly interdependent systems that reciprocally influence each other. For example, performing a gesture when learning a word or a phrase enhances its retrieval compared to pure verbal learning. Although the enhancing effects of co-speech gestures on memory are known to be robust, the underlying neural mechanisms are still unclear. Here, we summarize the results of behavioral and neuroscientific studies. They indicate that the neural representation of words consists of complex multimodal networks connecting perception and motor acts that occur during learning. In this context, gestures can reinforce the sensorimotor representation of a word or a phrase, making it resistant to decay. Also, gestures can favor embodiment of abstract words by creating it from scratch. Thus, we propose the use of gesture as a facilitating educational tool that integrates body and mind
Enriched learning : Behavior, brain, and computation
Open Access via the Elsevier Agreement Funder: German Research Foundation: KR 3735/3-1,MA 9552/1-1 Acknowledgments We thank Agnieszka Konopka, Antje Proske, Joost Rommers, and Anna Zamm for providing useful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript; Mingyuan Chu for feedback on Figure 1; and Stefan Kiebel for feedback on Box 3. This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (grants KR 3735/3-1, KR 3735/3-2, and MA 9552/1-1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Reduced structural connectivity between left auditory thalamus and the motion-sensitive planum temporale in developmental dyslexia
Developmental dyslexia is characterized by the inability to acquire typical
reading and writing skills. Dyslexia has been frequently linked to cerebral
cortex alterations; however recent evidence also points towards sensory
thalamus dysfunctions: dyslexics showed reduced responses in the left auditory
thalamus (medial geniculate body, MGB) during speech processing in contrast to
neurotypical readers. In addition, in the visual modality, dyslexics have
reduced structural connectivity between the left visual thalamus (lateral
geniculate nucleus, LGN) and V5/MT, a cerebral cortex region involved in visual
movement processing. Higher LGN-V5/MT connectivity in dyslexics was associated
with the faster rapid naming of letters and numbers (RANln), a measure that is
highly correlated with reading proficiency. We here tested two hypotheses that
were directly derived from these previous findings. First, we tested the
hypothesis that dyslexics have reduced structural connectivity between the left
MGB and the auditory motion-sensitive part of the left planum temporale (mPT).
Second, we hypothesized that the amount of left mPT-MGB connectivity correlates
with dyslexics RANln scores. Using diffusion tensor imaging based probabilistic
tracking we show that male adults with developmental dyslexia have reduced
structural connectivity between the left MGB and the left mPT, confirming the
first hypothesis. Stronger left mPT-MGB connectivity was not associated with
faster RANnl scores in dyslexics, but in neurotypical readers. Our findings
provide first evidence that reduced cortico-thalamic connectivity in the
auditory modality is a feature of developmental dyslexia, and that it may also
impact on reading related cognitive abilities in neurotypical readers
Task-dependent modulation of the visual sensory thalamus assists visual-speech recognition
The cerebral cortex modulates early sensory processing via feed-back
connections to sensory pathway nuclei. The functions of this top-down
modulation for human behavior are poorly understood. Here, we show that
top-down modulation of the visual sensory thalamus (the lateral geniculate
body, LGN) is involved in visual-speech recognition. In two independent
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, LGN response increased
when participants processed fast-varying features of articulatory movements
required for visual-speech recognition, as compared to temporally more stable
features required for face identification with the same stimulus material. The
LGN response during the visual-speech task correlated positively with the
visual-speech recognition scores across participants. In addition, the
task-dependent modulation was present for speech movements and did not occur
for control conditions involving non-speech biological movements. In
face-to-face communication, visual speech recognition is used to enhance or
even enable understanding what is said. Speech recognition is commonly
explained in frameworks focusing on cerebral cortex areas. Our findings suggest
that task-dependent modulation at subcortical sensory stages has an important
role for communication: Together with similar findings in the auditory modality
the findings imply that task-dependent modulation of the sensory thalami is a
general mechanism to optimize speech recognition
Concreteness and imageability differentially predict judgments of manual and visual similarity
Publisher PD
Gestures Enhance Foreign Language Learning
Language and gesture are highly interdependent systems that reciprocally influence each other. For example, performing a gesture when learning a word or a phrase enhances its retrieval compared to pure verbal learning. Although the enhancing effects of co-speech gestures on memory are known to be robust, the underlying neural mechanisms are still unclear. Here, we summarize the results of behavioral and neuroscientific studies. They indicate that the neural representation of words consists of complex multimodal networks connecting perception and motor acts that occur during learning. In this context, gestures can reinforce the sensorimotor representation of a word or a phrase, making it resistant to decay. Also, gestures can favor embodiment of abstract words by creating it from scratch. Thus, we propose the use of gesture as a facilitating educational tool that integrates body and mind
Altered structural connectivity of the left visual thalamus in developmental dyslexia
Developmental dyslexia is characterized by persistent reading and spelling
deficits. Partly due to technical challenges with investigating subcortical
sensory structures, current research on dyslexia in humans by-and-large focuses
on the cerebral cortex. These studies found that dyslexia is typically
associated with functional and structural alterations of a distributed
left-hemispheric cerebral cortex network. However, findings from animal models
and post-mortem studies in humans suggest that developmental dyslexia might
also be associated with structural alterations in subcortical sensory pathways.
Whether these alterations also exist in developmental dyslexia in-vivo and how
they relate to dyslexia symptoms is currently unknown. Here we used ultra-high
resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion MRI and
probabilistic tractography to investigate the structural connections of the
visual sensory pathway in dyslexia in-vivo. We discovered that individuals with
developmental dyslexia have reduced structural connections in the direct
pathway between the left visual thalamus (LGN) and left middle temporal area
V5/MT, but not between the left LGN and left primary visual cortex (V1). In
addition, left V5/MT-LGN connectivity strength correlated with rapid naming
abilities - a key deficit in dyslexia [14]. These findings provide the first
evidence of specific structural alterations in the connections between the
sensory thalamus and cortex in developmental dyslexia. The results challenge
current standard models and provide novel evidence for the importance of
cortico-thalamic interactions in explaining dyslexia.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figures, 2 table
Learning foreign language vocabulary with gestures and pictures enhances vocabulary memory for several months post-learning in eight-year-old school children
Funding Information: This work was funded by the German Research Foundation grant KR 3735/3-1, a Schulbezogene Forschung grant from the Saxony Zentrum für Lehrerbildung und Schulforschung (ZLS), and an Erasmus Mundus Postdoctoral Fellowship in Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience. B.M. is also supported by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant SENSOCOM 647051 to K.v.K. Acknowledgments Open access funding provided by Projekt DEAL. We thank Julia Schwerin for assistance with planning and preparing the study, as well as serving as a teacher to the children in two experiments.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
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